The World of Coca-Cola in downtown Atlanta was where I chose to visit for my manufacturing tour project. My time at the museum / facility was very enjoyable; I learned a lot about Coke products and how they are made. Bottle Works is a miniature manufacturing facility inside the museum, and its purpose is to teach people the process of manufacturing Coca-Cola in glass bottles. Until this year, the facility produced genuine Coca-Cola, which was given to all the visitors at the end of their visits. Now, due to safety and financial issues, the Bottle Works factory uses an inedible brown syrup to display the process only. I met Terrance, a “guest ambassador" in Bottle Works, and let him know about my assignment, which he found to be very interesting for an individual project. While I took notes with my tablet, he informed me in detail of the manufacturing process, both the one that was currently taking place, and also the large-scale process of the main factories. Some of the main factory lines were on real-time display on the monitors in the Quality Assurance Lab in Bottle Works. Main factories have some variations to Bottle Works, such as additional robots, operation on a larger scale, and a much faster rate of production. While Bottle Works produces Coke at a rate of twenty bottles per minute, the factory two miles away from the museum can produce 1400 glass bottles, 2000 cans or 4000 plastic bottles per minute.
As ethics and labor are a prevalent issue in today’s corporate infrastructure, Coca-Cola has taken strides in cutting unnecessary costs while promoting more eco-friendly products. The production process is mostly machine-driven, and direct labor is only incorporated in the final inspection of the products. Robots and machines perform all other tasks with the help of strong technological integration. The company now uses...
